The latest figures released by the Office of Management and Budget show that 382 agency data centers have been shut down under the initiative, which aims to close or consolidate roughly 1,200 of the nearly 2,900 identified date centers by 2015.

On the surface, the number of closures looks good, said David Powner, director of IT management issues at the Government Accountability Office, which released a report on data consolidation in July. However, Powner said agencies have not been forthcoming with information necessary to predict cost savings, so it is difficult to gauge what sort of savings are being realized.

Cost-savings estimates for the FDCCI have varied, with OMB predictions ranging from $3 billion to $5 billion. In the GAO report, agencies predicted roughly $2.4 billion in savings.

“The effort is on pace from a closure perspective,” Powner said. “But given the lack of complete plans and cost-savings information, it is questionable whether it is on pace to achieve the $3 billion in savings that has been promised.”

Powner said agencies have not provided quality asset inventories, network infrastructure savings or power usage information, “which is directly tied to cost savings,” making it difficult to pinpoint hard cost savings data.

At the time of the report, only one agency – the Commerce Department – submitted a complete data center consolidation plan. “Transparency on the completion of these plans could help,”Powner said.

Currently, the Department of Defense leads the way in data center closings with more than 100.

Calls to the DOD for specific comment on its data consolidation efforts were not returned by press time, nor were calls to the OMB, which has oversight of the data center consolidation. OMB expects agencies to offset data center consolidation costs through savings realized through increased efficiency – in hardware costs, energy usage and staffing required to operate and maintain the centers.

Powner said it is important to note that most data centers closed or consolidated thus far have been smaller data centers staffed in some cases by as few as one full-time employee or a half-time equivalent. While the impact on the workforce has not been a big issue to date, Powner said, it soon will be as larger data centers begin to close.

OPM is partnering with CSID to try to manage the fallout from a massive breach of some 4 million federal personnel records.

Reader comments

Mon, Mar 9, 2015
EricE

People couldn't wait to drop the ITI LOB - yet without that kind of data, why is anyone surprised we can't measure savings?
If you don't know where you started from how can you detect any change from where you ended up?
The ITI LOB may have had problems - but at least it was an attempt to start to rationalize and account for real costs (including labor!). That it was painful was a symptom of more fundamental issues, not a sign that ITI LOB or efforts like it are bad and should have been stopped...

Tue, Nov 20, 2012

Any savings that may be achieved, will not show up for several years due to transitional costs. Ramping up a capacity increase for one datacenter has to be completed before closing datacenters can move their processing to the remaining DCs. This will initally show up as an increase in costs, and any savings realized will be showing up in future years.

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